1. The Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the manufacture of highly dispersed supported nanoparticles. More particularly, the invention relates to manufacturing processes for making supported nanocatalysts using lower temperature heating to improve and/or maintain dispersion of the supported nanoparticles.
2. Related Technology
Particle catalysts are an important component of many industrial applications such as refining, organic synthesis, fine chemicals manufacturing, and many other industrial processes. In many catalyzed reactions, improving catalyst performance has the potential to greatly improve the profitability and/or viability of an industrial process. In many cases, a precious metal is used as the catalyst. By improving the catalyst performance, costs can be reduced by reducing the amount of catalyst being used and/or by increasing the product yield.
Improved catalyst performance has typically been achieved by reducing the size of the catalyst particles. Particulate catalysts are only active at the surface. Reducing the size of the catalyst particles increases the surface to volume ratio, thereby increasing catalyst performance.
One technique commonly used to obtain small catalyst particles on a support is to begin with the catalyst atoms dissolved in a solvent. The catalyst atoms are usually provided as metal salts due to the solubility of metal salts in various solvents. At some point during the manufacturing process, the catalyst is dried to remove the solvent. To decrease the time it takes to remove the solvent, the intermediate catalyst is often heated to between 100° C. and 400° C.
It is known in the art that heating the catalyst atoms can cause agglomeration of catalyst particles. Some researchers have tried obtaining smaller particle sizes by adsorbing the catalyst atoms onto a support at temperatures below 100° C. However, low temperature drying using prior art methods has not produced significantly better catalysts.